Far Country, a — Volume 3 eBook

This meant the development of a new culture, one to
be founded on the American tradition of equality of
opportunity. But culture was not a weed that
grew overnight; it was a leaven that spread slowly
and painfully, first inoculating a few who suffered
and often died for it, that it might gradually affect
the many. The spread of culture implied the recognition
of leadership: democratic leadership, but still
leadership. Leadership, and the wisdom it implied,
did not reside in the people, but in the leaders who
sprang from the people and interpreted their needs
and longings.... He went on to discuss a part
of the programme of the Citizens Union....

What struck me, as I laid down the typewritten sheets,
was the extraordinary resemblance between the philosophies
of Hermann Krebs and Theodore Watling. Only—­Krebs’s
philosophy was the bigger, held the greater vision
of the two; I had reluctantly and rather bitterly to
admit it. The appeal of it had even reached and
stirred me, whose task was to refute it! Here
indeed was something to fight for—­perhaps
to die for, as he had said: and as I sat there
in my office gazing out of the window I found myself
repeating certain phrases he had used—­the
phrase about leadership, for instance. It was
a tremendous conception of Democracy, that of acquiescence
to developed leadership made responsible; a conception
I was compelled to confess transcended Mr. Watling’s,
loyal as I was to him.... I began to reflect
how novel all this was in a political speech—­although
what I have quoted was in the nature of a preamble.
It was a sermon, an educational sermon. Well,
that is what sermons always had been,—­and
even now pretended to be,—­educational and
stirring, appealing to the emotions through the intellect.
It didn’t read like the Socialism he used to
preach, it had the ring of religion. He had called
it religion.

With an effort of the will I turned from this ironical
and dangerous vision of a Hugh Paret who might have
been enlisted in an inspiring struggle, of a modern
yet unregenerate Saul kicking against the pricks,
condemned to go forth breathing fire against a doctrine
that made a true appeal; against the man I believed
I hated just because he had made this appeal.
In the act of summoning my counter-arguments I was
interrupted by the entrance of Grierson. He was
calling on a matter of business, but began to talk
about the extracts from Krebs’s speech he had
read in the Mail and State.

“What in hell is this fellow driving at, Paret?”
he demanded. “It sounds to me like the
ranting of a lunatic dervish. If he thinks so
much of us, and the way we run the town, what’s
he squawking about?”

I looked at Grierson, and conceived an intense aversion
for him. I wondered how I had ever been able
to stand him, to work with him. I saw him in
a sudden flash as a cunning, cruel bird of prey, a
gorged, drab vulture with beady eyes, a resemblance
so extraordinary that I wondered I had never remarked
it before. For he had the hooked vulture nose,
while the pink baldness of his head was relieved by
a few scanty tufts of hair.